ESA appoints Surrey Satellite to lead Moonlight telecoms initiative
The European Space Agency has announced its Moonlight initiative, to provide telecommunications and navigation services for future missions to the Moon.
Two consortia have been selected to create the necessary commercially viable constellation of lunar satellites, designed to enable sustainable space exploration.
Surrey Satellite Technology will lead the first consortium, both through its lunar services brand SSTL Lunar and as the satellite manufacturer.
The consortium also includes: satellite manufacturer Airbus; satellite network providers SES, based in Luxembourg, and Kongsberg Satellite Services, based in Norway; the Goonhilly Earth Station in the UK; and British satellite navigation company GMV-NSL.
The
Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd (SSTL) and
Telespazio to lead two consortiums to study how to provide telecommunications and navigation services for missions to the Moon.
The ESA Moonlight initiative, announced May 20, seeks to lay out a path for a constellation of lunar communication and navigation satellites as an end-to-end system, complete with a Moon ground segment and an Earth ground segment. Such a constellation would allow missions on the far side of the Moon to keep in contact with Earth, without a direct line of sight to Earth.
“A lasting link with the Moon enables sustainable space exploration for all our international partners, including commercial space companies. By using an ESA-backed telecommunications and navigation service for the Moon, explorers will be able to navigate smoothly and to relay to Earth all the knowledge gained from these lunar missions,” commented Elodie Viau, ESA’s director of Telecommunications and Integrated Applications.
Alongside these benefits, the ESA added: “Radio astronomers could set up observatories on the far side of the Moon. Rovers could trundle across the lunar surface more speedily. It could even enable the teleoperation of rovers and other equipment from Earth.”
It added that private companies could even make virtual reality games in which players “manipulate lunar robots or see through the eyes of astronauts”.
Thursday’s announcement came months after NASA named its 18-strong team for the Artemis mission, which will see astronauts return to the Moon by 2024 in a spacecraft part-built in Germany.
The ESA indicated its system would be available to all nations with a space programme, including China, Russia, India and the US. But it also added: “Lowering the ticket price to lunar exploration could empower a wider group of ESA member states to launch their own national lunar missions.